


Ghost Light Coda: The Haunting of Gabriel Chase

by DBC_82



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Aftermath, Arson, Classic Who Companions Are Awesome, Closure, Gabriel Chase, Gen, Ghost Hunters, Teenage Rebellion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 00:41:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28036332
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DBC_82/pseuds/DBC_82
Summary: In the aftermath of TVs Ghost Light, the Doctor and Ace decide to investigate the strange history of Gabriel Chase and find a number of surprises.
Relationships: Seventh Doctor & Ace McShane
Kudos: 5





	Ghost Light Coda: The Haunting of Gabriel Chase

It has long been said that Gabriel Chase in Perivale, as well as being a splendid example of early neoclassical architecture, was also plagued by many supernatural visitations. Ever since it's original construction in 1689 and over the following centuries, many mysterious events and unexplained apparitions would be visited upon this troubled edifice, though always it seemed in the form of the same two figures, accompanied by an unearthly bellowing and an eerie light.

 _-_ Extract from _“London's Greatest Ghosts”_

Ace eyed the Time Lord suspiciously, 'Wicked? I thought you didn't exactly approve of explosives?'

'And I don't! Apart from on those rare occasions when I do...' the Doctor said.

'And what about arson...?' Her smile faltered. ' That's how my social workers referred to it anyway, not that they ever bothered to ask me why I did it.'

The Doctor looked at her from beneath the brim of his hat, 'Did I ever tell you about the time I accidentally gave Emperor Nero the idea to burn down Rome?'

'Really?' Ace asked, impressed.

'I may have also been indirectly responsible for the Great Fire of London...'

'Now you're just showing off.'

The Doctor clutched his lapels, 'On the contrary, what I'm trying clumsily to explain is that I understand. Who was it said, “Destruction is a form of creation?”'

Before he could continue the repaired grandfather clock began to chime and he wandered off to examine his handiwork leaving Ace sat alone at the bottom of the staircase. Apart from the sound of the clock the rest of the house had fallen silent, all the angry clicks and chirps of flora and fauna had subsided and an air of repose had begun to settle along with the dust. In Light's aftermath the house seemed smaller and less imposing. In the dim gaslight she even noticed where the wood panelling was scuffed and the paintwork looked chipped in places. It was as though now the energies from the stone spaceship in the basement had ceased the house itself was unravelling. She wondered what Mrs Grose would make of it when she arrived in the morning to find Gabriel Chase empty and abandoned.

For as long as Ace could remember she'd heard stories about the house, stupid stories they'd whispered to each other in the playground about the old house off Perivale Lane where you could see ghosts in the windows if you went round after dark. She'd never been bothered by them and apart from scaling the walls on the occasional dare she'd never really bothered with the stupid old house. That had changed the day Manisha died and it'd all been too much to cope with. She'd ran out of that hated flat she shared with her mum and whichever of her mum's boyfriends was staying that week; she'd ran in search of something, anything that would blot out the enormity of what it was she was feeling. Instead she'd stood in the humid decay of Gabriel Chase and felt all her fear and rage magnified and reflected back at her until it had became unbearable. It was as if the stolen lighter she'd found in her pocket that day had been put there for a reason and as the first flames had licked at the dry woodwork she'd felt something massive and undeniable change within her forever.

It might have been Dorothy McShane who ran into Gabriel Chase but it was Ace who burned it to the ground.

It wasn't until a cold Saturday in February the year after, when she'd been trawling around Camden Market and found her trusty bomber jacket hanging forgotten on a dusty rail that she'd finally discovered her name, her _true_ name. She told her mates that very day in no uncertain terms to start calling her Ace. It'd felt as though she was shedding everything she used to be and becoming something harder and more fierce. The Professor had once told her he'd chosen to refer to himself as “the Doctor” because it was a promise he made to himself and as he explained his reasoning she realised she'd felt the same way. “Dorothy” was the name her mum had chosen because she'd loved that stupid old film but it'd never felt like it belonged to her. Perhaps it was weird Dotty who got laughed at in primary school because she wanted to be an astronaut but it was Ace who broke the nose of anyone who suggested otherwise.

The day she'd hit upon the formula for Nitro-9 had cemented that turning point, albeit in a particularly unstable and explosive way. On reflection it seemed like an apt metaphor, she thought with a smile.

The Doctor reappeared from whatever dark corner he'd been exploring and proffered his arm. 'Shall we?' he said with mock theatricality.

She stood up and brushed her hands off on her dress. A change of outfit was in order, she needed to feel like herself again and that meant losing the heavy drapes she'd been obliged to wear for the last few hours. They'd been useful if only so that the inmates had finally stopped gawking at her like she was some kind of circus freak but putting on a costume had never really appealed. Plus the Victorians had absolutely no sense of street cred. It was time to be Ace again.

'Lets shall,' she said and started up the stairs. The Doctor looked down at the glimpse of Doc Marten that was just visible below the hem of her dress and raised an eyebrow.

'Well those are hardly period.'

Ace smiled innocently back at him, 'You know what they say Professor, you can take the girl out of Perivale...'

They spent an age wandering the upper landing until she noticed a familiar stuffed Auk against the green patterned wallpaper and realised that they'd managed to end up back in the same hallway as they'd started in.

'I think these corridors are moving Professor, it's worse than the TARDIS!'

'Quiet Ace, she'll hear you..

'It's like that painting of a staircase that goes nowhere,' she said.

'M.C. Escher. I got stuck inside one of his illustrations once,' said the Doctor happily.

'Come again?'

The Doctor stopped walking. 'To cut a long story short, an old friend created a fictitious city based on the works of Escher using only block transfer computations as a trap intended to destroy me forever.'

'An old friend?' she asked incredulously.

'Well, old friend or mortal enemy depending on the day of the week. You know how it is.'

'And?'

The Doctor shrugged, 'It ended up being rather more tedious than nefarious as far as I can recall. And evidently unsuccessful of course, I'm rather more difficult to get rid of it seems. Ah, this way I think' he said and set off down an identical corridor.

They spent another few minutes wandering the corridors of the house, trying to retrace their steps towards the TARDIS. The Doctor seemed insistent on spotting danger in every shadow and spent a happy minute duelling a particularly large fern with his umbrella outstretched like a rapier. Ace remained stubbornly unamused.

'When you've quite finished.'

'You can never be too careful Ace, even vegetation can be perilous.' He made another spirited attack at the potted fern, 'Out damn Krynoid!'

'I can tell when you're trying to cheer me up you know,' she said.

The Doctor abandoned the skirmish and wandered over to her.

'Is it working?'

'No,' she said and stuck out her tongue at him.

Turning back to her own thoughts Ace picked idly at a stain on her dress. She supposed it didn't matter if the dress was dirty now as it had probably been Gwendoline's anyway, and Gwendoline was dead just like all the rest of her family were dead, and so was Face Ache Mathews and Inspector Mackenzie and..

The Doctor leaned forward and placed his hand on her shoulder. 'I'm sorry I couldn't save them,' he said.

'It wasn't your fault, it was Josaiah's and Light's. It's funny, all those years from now when I burned this place down, I was so angry and so sad, I never even stopped to think about the house itself. Or the people who might have lived here.'

'Let's go back to the TARDIS,' he said.

She rubbed her eyes and gestured at the faded wallpaper. 'What'll happen to this place?'

The Doctor smiled, 'Well you burn it down in a hundred years time but between then and now I think the diary's clear.'

'And London just grows up around it like it isn't here?'

'Like weeds through the cracks in a pavement.'

It seemed suddenly strange for the house to have occupied such a place in her imagination for so long that she didn't know more about it. 'What was it like before Josiah and Light came along?' she asked.

'I've no idea,' said the Doctor, before knocking once on a heavy wooden door that Ace hadn't previously noticed. The door swung open revealing the sinister nursery in which the TARDIS had landed.

'Shall we go and find out?'

******

They'd travelled first to the late seventeenth century, materialising the time craft in the half-constructed turret room at the very top of the house that would eventually come to be known as Gabriel Chase. It was a warm summer evening and through an empty window frame Ace looked out at the parish of what was then called Pyryvale as the sun set over the fields, toiled and ready for harvest. As far as she could see it was little more than a church, an orchard and a scattering of houses surrounding by rolling farmland and about as boring as it was always going to be. The house as well as the parish that surrounded it seemed oddly calm and in the bare floorboards and plain plaster walls of the house there was no trace of the horrors that were to be visited upon it.

'It is down there now do you think?' she whispered as they stood at the window.

'What?'

'Light's ship.'

The Doctor frowned in the dim light. 'Yes I imagine so. Waiting in the shadows beneath the house like a guilty secret.'

Ace shivered at the thought of it despite the warm evening air, half tempted to go down and put an end to Light's influence with a couple of cans of Nitro-9 there and then. Not that she ever would of course, she'd had enough of the Doctor's lectures on the fragile nature of the web of time to last her several lifetimes.

Sometimes knowing the future wasn't all it was cracked up to be.

As they tiptoed through the bones of the house it reminded Ace of sneaking into building sites on rainy weekends to light fires and doss about with the gang. She stopped for a moment and realised she'd been thinking about the gang a lot recently, just wondering idly about the possibility of popping back and saying “hi, I'm alive, how's it going?” She almost dismissed the idea, the universe seemed too frequently imperilled for her to ask the Doctor to let her make a social call but who knew, maybe after the stunt he'd pulled with Gabriel Chase he'd realise he owed her one.

After spending some time quietly watching the moon rise over the village the Doctor looked at her without smiling, his eyes dark pools beneath the brim of his fedora.

'Tell me more about your friend...' he asked.

'Who?' she asked, already knowing the answer.

'Manisha.'

Not for the first time she wondered how it was that the Doctor always seemed to know exactly what it was she was thinking.

To Ace's great relief their conversation was interrupted by the sound of raised voices from outside the front of the house. Upon closer inspection they discovered an angry mob of villagers forming up while shouting about devilry and citing bible scripture, while that wasn't exactly an unusual occurrence in itself, she doubted either of them felt up the pitchforks and flaming torches that inevitably followed.

'Ace, I think this might be one of those occasions where discretion is the better form of valour,' the Doctor said.

'Is that your way of saying let's scarper?'

'Indeed it is.'

'What do you think they want?' she asked.

'They probably heard the TARDIS arrive, she can be somewhat conspicuous on occasion and primitive cultures have been known to react with fear to the unknown.'

Now that's an understatement, she thought wryly.

After escaping the seventeenth century unscathed they made a brief hop forward. Ace emerged from the TARDIS to find herself amongst the ornamental gardens at the rear of the house on a crisp winter's morning. The grass crunched satisfyingly underfoot and silvery cobwebs hung delicately amongst the low hedges. The Doctor took up her arm and they set off for a walk around the grounds.

'You were saying,' he said eventually.

She took a deep breath, 'Manisha was my best friend when we were growing up, she liked Salvador Dali and Top of the Pops and she made the best Kabuli Palaw you ever tasted. Her house always felt more like home than mine, you know?' she said. 'I mean her dad was quite traditional and could be a bit much but it was still better than being at home with mum....'

She stopped walking as she struggled to find words for the feelings she'd left unspoken for so long.

'I was the only one who visited her in the hospital out of everyone, can you believe that!? Even the teachers were afraid to go and see her.'

The Doctor took her hand without speaking.

'I'm so sorry.'

Ace brushed the tears from her cheeks. 'It's all ancient history right Professor? One hundred years ago, one hundred years from now, what's the difference?'

'I think you know the answer to that.' he said.

They returned to the TARDIS and journeyed on. Now that Ace had delved into history she felt compelled to keep searching for something that she couldn't quite put her finger on. They made a number of brief stops, materialising at random in cupboards and pantrys in an attempt to learn something more about the history of Gabriel Chase but apart from startling maids and disturbing kitchen boys the house just felt incomplete and sad in a way that she felt she couldn't quite explain to her companion.

In what the Doctor described as Regency Era Perivale they found themselves in a cupboard. Ace stared at the four walls before thumping her first against them.

'It's all just the same pastel panels,' she said. 'I thought that we'd at least find out something about the house. Something worthwhile, or-'

'Yes...?'

'I dunno, that maybe once it was something beautiful, or maybe just something free.'

She took a moment to collect herself while the Doctor waited patiently next to a pile of clean pressed linen.

'It still hurts,' she said through clenched teeth. 'What kind of animal would do that to another human being? Just pour petrol through a letterbox and set light to it like it was nothing.'

The Doctor smiled a sad smile and took a towel down from the shelf next to him, which he began to fold as he spoke. 'I wish I knew. Evil can take a multitude of forms and come in many guises, I should know I've been battling it all my lives. I've seen hatred and fear drive people to do the most unspeakable things, wage endless wars and commit unspeakable atrocities, even genocide. Take the Daleks, undeniably evil though they are they are nothing to the cruelty that can be inflicted on one another. Yet even I, ancient though I am and for all my travels still don't understand why,'

He seemed to sink into himself slightly and in that moment Ace felt like she understood what it meant to have lived for over nine hundred years.

'What I have learned in all my travels,' he continued, 'Is that evil isn't inevitable and hatred will never define us. Violence will always be hasty and kindness will always be wise. And above all else there is always a choice.'

Ace looked blearily at the sheepish figure of the Time Lord in front of her as he held up the hand towel transformed into an origami swan. Did he really have her best interests at heart, or was this all part of some larger plan against some other unknowable evil from the dawn of time? She got that the Doctor was an alien but he'd never felt quite so unknowable than in that moment when she'd stood on the staircase of Gabriel Chase and called him out.

Their conversation was again interrupted, this time by a red-faced housekeeper wielding a bedpan.

'Out! Out you devils! There's no seat for sprites at my table!'

'My most sincere apologies Madam, we were just leaving,' the Doctor called while simultaneously doffing his hat and unlocking the doors of the TARDIS.

As they dematerialised Ace leant heavily against the doors wondering what exactly it was she'd been searching for. They'd spent the last few hours but traversing the history of Gabriel Chase but despite their best efforts she felt as though she was no closer to unravelling the mystery of the house that had both fascinated and haunted her for as long as she could remember.

The Doctor took a long look at his companion and made a decision.

'I have an idea,' he said....

******

The TARDIS materialised on a square of well-manicured lawn, slipping effortlessly back into the material universe in the briefest of moments between the just then and the right now. The light on top of the police box had yet to finish flashing before the door was pulled inward and Ace walked out onto the grass. She turned in a circle and then stopped abruptly, staring at the imposing Victorian edifice of Gabriel Chase, that stood restored before her.

Taking yet another deep breath Ace forced herself to undertake a detailed and objective assessment of the house. From the outside it looked much the same as it'd always been, the same pale stonework and large arched windows with a stubby turret perched atop, rising from the high slanted roof. It was only as she examined it more closely that she noticed the more modern touches like the double glazed windows and a visible alarm system. The house didn't conjure up the same sense of foreboding either, though that also could have had something to do with the tasteful array of pot plants and small ornate trees that were dotted around the paved areas outside the house.

The Doctor followed her out of the TARDIS and took a few quick steps across the lawn before bending to press a hand to the ground. He glanced upward and frowned before twirling on the spot with his umbrella outstretched. 'Welcome to the future,' he said. 'Though I suppose even that perspective is relative.'

'The house is still standing. How is that possible?' she asked.

The Doctor pressed his umbrella into the lawn and stood beside her, staring at the house. 'Technically it isn't, it was rebuilt. And here's me thinking we left the Restoration behind us...'

'Professor, that wasn't an answer.'

The Doctor cleared his throat, 'Well as far as I know, after you burned it down in 1983 there was an attempt to demolish the ruins which proved unsuccessful, though it's unclear why. The remains of the house were then declared a Site of Special Scientific Interest. It certainly seems to have fallen into safer hands than those of Josiah Samuel Smith,' he said before sniffing the air. 'National Trust if I had to make a guess.'

'How can you tell?'

'It has an air of stagnant magnificence. Plus the signage is a dead giveaway.'

Ace took the opportunity to deliberately walk on the lawn, despite the small square on wood embedded in the grass that politely requested otherwise. If the National Trust didn't want people walking on the grass they probably weren't that crazy about time machines landing on their lawns either, she reasoned.

'When are we?' she asked.

'You tell me...'

Fine, if you want to play this game, she thought. Narrowing her eyes she could just about discern the sun through the Poplar trees that lined the drive and from its position against the horizon she could tell that it was roughly late afternoon. The temperature was distinctly average, neither particularly cold nor particularly warm, meaning it was probably either spring or early autumn at a guess. Above her she could see the vapour trails of aircraft passing overhead in a holding stack above Heathrow and from beyond the high stone walls she could just about hear the dull roar of heavy traffic on Western Avenue, the same noise that she'd come to associate with childhood.

'Late twentieth century or early twenty-first,' she said as she sniffed the air.

'How does it feel to be home' the Doctor asked.

Oh now he asks my opinion, she thought. Instead she shrugged more nonchalantly than she felt.

'It feels very much like I've returned to the house that represents all my childhood nightmares, only now it has a gift shop.'

The Doctor laughed in surprise and Ace smiled despite herself. 'I hope you can understand that it was never my intention to hurt you.' he said. 'Forgive an old man his indulgences, I was young once too and I had fears all of my own.'

The statement took Ace by surprise. Surely the Doctor had always been old, like the Queen or David Attenborough.

'Like what?' she asked.

'Oh unspeakable horrors and tedious tribulations. Monsters from the dawn of time and wet Wednesday afternoons.'

Leaving the Doctor behind her Ace walked over to a noticeboard embedded in the edge of the lawn. It was of the variety with which she was all too familiar from school trips to museums and stately homes and which she'd always studiously ignored. Deciding that now was no time to break with tradition she turned to head back to the Doctor before something caught her eye. Beneath the map of the house and grounds and all the other useful information, tucked away in the bottom corner was a heading that began 'The Ghosts of Gabriel Chase.' It went on to describe the stories of the sightings of a small man and a young woman who had been witnessed on various occasions throughout the many centuries of Gabriel Chase's history and who were always accompanied by strange noises and an unearthly blue light. With a sudden gasp Ace realised that she was reading about herself. Somehow in the last few hours they had unwittingly become the source of the ghost stories that had given the house it's unearthly reputation. She experienced an odd moment of sudden disassociation and wondered if she'd always known about the ghosts of Gabriel Chase or whether history had been rewritten around her. For a long time she could only stare open-mouthed at the words in front of her.

'Professor,' she said eventually, pointing at the information board, 'It's us.'

The Doctor walked over to join her and read the board in front of them with a growing smile. 'Well, that's time travel for you,' he said.

Ace pulled her jacket more tightly around her feeling suddenly cold and without another word they'd returned to the TARDIS.

'So, where to next?' the Doctor asked as they'd departed.

Watching the central column rise and fall in its gentle oscillation she considered how best to frame her request. She felt too restless to just idle in the vortex for hours on end while the Doctor plotted his next chess move and she couldn't seem to shake the nagging feeling that they'd only solved half the puzzle. The more she thought about Gabriel Chase the more she thought that it had to mean something that it'd been restored after being burned it down. How had they become so tangled up in its history all in the space of a few hours? Was it really possible that their random trips throughout its history had rippled forward in time and changed her memories or had they always been a part of events? Ace could feel her head starting to ache as she attempted to unravel the complexities of four dimensional physics and she resolved to make it the Doctor's problem instead. He always seemed to have a quick answer for the difficult questions.

'I was thinking... Seeing as how we're ghosts now, we might as well see the future. We could keep going and find out what happens to Gabriel Chase.'

'If you're sure?'

'Course Professor, ghosts aren't scared of haunted houses, right? Stands to reason.'

'Well of course not, what a preposterous idea.'

The Doctor had set the coordinates and within a few minutes they emerged from the TARDIS into the brilliant sunshine of a summer's day in the late twenty-second century. Shielding her eyes from the glare of the sun Ace gazed at the deserted mansion standing abandoned amidst a plain of rolling grassland. Though the structure of the house had survived it had fallen badly into disrepair and there was no trace of Perivale. The Doctor wandered around the house occasionally shouting back at her excitedly at whatever it was that he'd discovered. She couldn't quite get over how quiet it was, Ace was so used to the distant hum of traffic that it's absence was noticeable, instead all she could hear was the distant lowing of cattle and the chirping of crickets. They walked around the house as the Doctor explained what'd happened to the world in the aftermath of the Dalek invasion while Ace had reminisced about Shoreditch in the sixties in what felt like a lifetime ago.

They departed again only to materialise in the same spot in several hundred years time to find Gabriel Chase rebuilt once again; this time the replica of the original house stood encased within a giant bell jar, surrounded by an endless sea of thin crystal spires reaching up into the sky. The air was alive with the drone and roar of spaceships and strange aerial craft that passed low overhead and the chatter of the oddly dressed citizens of the twenty-fifth century at whom Ace gazed in wonder. Travelling further forward they found the house again intact but dwarfed by a larger structure, jutting out of the Earth at an irregular angle. As far as Ace could tell it was a giant hive the size of a tower block that looked as though it was made out of iridescent geometric crystal and surrounded by endless acres of strange alien jungle. After some exploration the Doctor informed her that the house had become the Earth embassy for a race of reptilian aliens called the Foamasi. They stood in an awed silence and stared up at the incredible structure in front of them as a warm breeze rustled through the vegetation. Four centuries later Ace emerged from the TARDIS into freezing darkness and a blustering snowstorm. She pulled her jacket up over her face while pulling her hands into her sleeves as the Doctor raised his umbrella to little effect. They stumbled forward through the howling winds and snow flurries to find the house a broken shell once again, its stones and timbers collapsed and frozen white. Though they didn't stay long to explore Ace could see that the majority of the building was still encased within a massive glacier that stretched up into the night sky.

Ace blinked the ice from her eyelashes as they hauled themselves shivering back into the TARDIS.

'What was that Professor?'

'The new ice age,' the Doctor said as they dematerialised again, apparently unaffected by the cold. 'We had a bit of trouble with the Martians as I recall.'

On and on they travelled, arriving at random intervals to witness the passage of history. More often than not they found themselves alone on their explorations, though sometimes they encountered others. On one strange occasion the TARDIS materialised in a meadow amidst a crowd of robed scholars to the scattering of petals and the happy sound of chanting beneath a clear spring sky, Aeons passed in the blink of an eye as they journeyed from the desolate and polluted wastelands of the Majestic Imperial Unification to the alabaster domes and arches of the New Roman Empire. In whatever century they materialised and whoever it was they encountered though there was always Gabriel Chase, either resplendent and restored or crumbling into ruins.

At some inconceivable point in the far distant future and after several hours spent travelling the Doctor and Ace stood wearily in the control room of the TARDIS trying to find some trace of the house on the scanner. After some searching they located it, clinging to the pitted surface of an asteroid, entirely devoid of atmosphere and tumbling languidly through the vacuum of space somewhere between the orbits of Jupiter and Mars. The Doctor attempted to explain the date of the Gregorian calendar in linear terms using an apple and a chalkboard filled with zeroes but Ace had wandered off distractedly to stare at the image in front of them. She felt as though the puzzle was slowly unfolding in front of her, its intricate clockwork laid bear by the relentless passage of time.

'Professor,' she whispered, staring at the ruined but intact Victorian mansion as it fell silently through the expanse of space, 'What happened?'

The Doctor was suddenly standing by her side, 'Time, just time.' he said.

'How's it still here?'

The Doctor cleared his throat, and busied himself with the controls of the console, suddenly awkward. 'It's my theory' he said eventually, 'that given the various temporal interactions that played out within the long history of Gabriel Chase, it has somehow become a fixed point in time.'

'And what's that when its at home?'

'Time is... fluid, like water, but just as a water can be liquid so it can be ice. I think that a combination of influences has had a profound effect, that is to say the energies released from Light's spaceship and the house's entanglement with both of our timelines has resulted in it becoming a permanent feature of reality.'

'But its a ruin again?

'Yes it's a ruin again, just as it was a ruin before and as it was inevitably rebuilt, again and again and again, the cycle of creation and destruction continuing forever. Depending on your perspective everything is always a ruin just as it's always flourishing, all the time always. Have I taught you nothing?'

Ace listened to the comforting background hum of the TARDIS. All the time they'd spent exploring and she'd known somehow that there was something strange about Gabriel Chase that they couldn't see from up close. Had it only been the lingering scream of Light's malevolence that had drawn her to the house or had she somehow know that it was bound up in her future?

The Doctor took her hand. 'Frightening isn't it? To step across the wheel of history and see how fragile it all is.'

I think it's beautiful' she said and the Doctor looked at her in surprise.

They spent a considerable amount of time staring at the scanner, watching the light of the distant sun play across the tired features of the old house that they both now knew so well as it drifted through the infinite.

'We've accidentally made an indelible mark on the history of Gabriel Chase today,' the Doctor said finally, 'Just as we've followed it to it's end. Should we continue?'

Ace yawned. 'No thanks,' she said, as she flicked the control that switched off the scanner. 'I think I've had enough of ghost stories to last me a lifetime.'


End file.
